The 2014 Africa Regional Chapter workshop in Dakar 23 & 24 August 2014 hosted an interactive and cherished discussion among a group of 29 Chapter leaders and 4 Internet Society Staff and workshop leaders Ruud Janssen of www.TNOC.org and Merrion Siobhan on behalf of API. Each participant brought up valuable experiences and contribution that was designed to be shared in a collaborative exchange format.

We’ve bottled up the experiences in a series of video snippets which you can sample below in this blog post. On August 23 they started off with the Positive Political Intelligence workshop presented by Siobhan Merrion. The participants assessed their Political Intelligence Profile and learned to positively influence the politics in their organisation.

Subsequently they identified how to use this learning within their chapter work particularly to activate the multi stakeholder approach.

The recap of that session can be found in the video trailer below.

The evening allowed for further conversation and socialising during a dinner in Dakar.

Bright and early on Monday 24 August the Chapter Leaders reconvened. Workshop designer and Facilitator Ruud Janssen of TNOC | The New Objective Collective encouraged the Participants to look at multiple perspective of the experiences in their chapters. The sessions were designed to be participant centric and extract the core learnings from the experience and insights from the ISOC Chapter Leaders.

To generate user generated content and celebrate the various perspective, a camera was passed around to take picture of the personal perspectives.

Every participant added their presence to the ISOC Chapter Workshop World Map (soon to be available online) and out of the submitted topics, each participant voted on their personal top 4 topics to be discussed.

After the break the room was transformed into a fishbowl setup where in one hour time slots the top 4 topics were discussed.

To get a taster of the second day of the workshop see the video compilation:

Below a recap of the 4 topics and the core outcomes.

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Fishbowl Topic # 1 = How to best finance your Chapter activities

Key Ideas / Points

A) Identify influential people to bring into the Chapter who can assist in forming key funding partnerships with other organisations, government etc.

A) Training is key to capacity building: e.g., use and train “ambassadors” that can lead and mentor the different communities of interest. The representatives can then have a ‘multiplier’ effect.

B) It is essential to develop a plan, so the capacity building can be properly defined and scoped (capacity building on what? For whom?).

C) An appropriate ‘platform’ needs to be used: define your messages/topics and select an appropriate technique and platform to “spread the word”

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Fishbowl Topic # 3 – How can we make ISOC Chapters more influential in Policy making decisions by Government

Key Ideas / Points

A) It is important to ensure that members of the Chapter understand the objectives of the ICT strategies of government so you can work with them to help them achieve their goals.

B) Chapters should try to ensure that they include some of the key decision makers in the chapter or if do not, try to establish relationships with the key decision makers.

C) Identify, lobby or engage with key influencers who can make things happen at the chapter level and within important committees.

D) Raise awareness of the issues among different communities of interest, thereby enabling them to work together achieve the mutual objectives

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Fishbowl Topic # 4 – How to best find and motivate volunteers to contribute to ISOC

Key Ideas / Points

A) Find out the interests, passions and skills of the volunteers and tap into those

B) Consider attaching benefit and/or value to their volunteers membership of the chapter eg. if you volunteer for this, you get “x”.

C) Expand your “network” of supporters, and get influential people on board to serve as motivators.

D) To recruit volunteers, every Chapter should have a clear vision, supported by a statement of objectives which describe what the Chapter is trying to achieve. These can then be translated into targeted actions for the volunteers.

After the 4 Fishbowls, every participant identified 1 specific personal action on which they gave up for adoption to their neighbour and got peer consultation on how to move forward with this action in a 90 minute interactive format called “The Solution Room”.

Human Spectrographs were made to illustrate the consulting power in the room (>150 years in total of Internet Society experience in the room!).

The Solution Room allowed participants to consult their peers and be consulted by their peers in 7 minute rounds and the key takeaways and actions were noted down on the table in hand drawn pictograms and action points in the form of mind maps.

Then these actions were transferred onto (self addressed) postcards which every participant will receive within 2 months after the workshop towards the second week of October 2014.

The level of interaction and energy in room came to a maximum at this stage where the readiness to action the learning was second to none…

See some of the testimonials of the experience in a selection of videos below: